10 thoughts on “An Audience with the King”

Good post, Ian, thanks! I am so pro­grammed into nev­er going out that it didn’t even occur to me to try to go, even though I “live in London” (ie daily com­mute to and from a suburb/Kings Cross).Interesting the books of King’s you high­lighted as his greats. I haven’t read all of King but the ones you men­tion are my favour­ites (have not read Dolores Clairborne), I think the Stand is my favour­ite of all, though I would sub­sti­tute Salem’s Lot for The Shining in your list. (The book of the Shining was bet­ter than the movie by a long way, though.)

I’m a huge fan of America’s Schlockmiester and think he’s hor­ribly mis­rep­res­en­ted by the Snoberati. He’s not always a con­sist­ent author, but he’s a fas­cin­at­ing one. I just fin­ished Bag of Bones and before that From a Buick Eight and loved the deep slice of Americana he served up with the under­stated hor­ror story.

I know you and King both share an approach to writ­ing — the sit­ting down and just writ­ing approach (it’s prob­ably got a real name. Or else make one up.) I am the oppos­ite. I think plan­ning and plot­ting is essen­tial to build­ing a story. But even though I approach things in a dif­fer­ent way, I really admire the huge range and depth of King’s writ­ing and that’s prob­ably a res­ult of not hav­ing a strict plot mapped out.

I wrote a post about King a short while ago, but it wasn’t as good as yours.

Maxine, you should have come along! I’m not a great fan of Salem’s Lot — while good, I think it con­tains the seed of King’s later word­i­i­ness, and I thought it was a little too deriv­at­ive of Stoker’s Dracula. Good book, though…

I enjoyed your post on King, Roland — it’s def­in­itely true that the crit­ics of the world have done him a dis­ser­vice. At the same time, I can’t help but think that the real test of his class is the astound­ing sales fig­ures. I sus­pect King’s fic­tion will out­live the com­ments of his crit­ics.

So, you thought that the great she-dev­il Madame Arcati would not get to hear of these foul words against her per­son, did you? I might have guessed that the little squirt Ali Karim would be the source. I fol­lowed the trail of his mis­spellings (eg “peice”) and here I find myself in this twi­light world of unre­con­struc­ted writer-love, yum yum, this temple ded­ic­ated to stalk­er grapho­ma­ni­acs and oth­er lapsed sub­scibers to the Dr Who mag.

Arcati’s watch­ing you Karim, oh yes. This Arcati knows what to do with her crys­tal ball and where to shove it. But I thank you also for the great­er dis­sem­in­a­tion of the Arcati legend and you’d bet­ter carry on pro­mot­ing me if you don’t want me to invoke my unfriendly famil­i­ars who lurk on the out­er edges of the blo­go­sphere. You don’t want me to get too upset now, do you, Mr Al — MD of Chemicals and Gases — Karim?